A Cast of Vultures

by Judith Flanders

  I was amazed to learn Arthur was eighty. My conservative estimate would have been 180. He had some sort of spinal condition that kept him bent over, only able to look up by turning his head at an angle. And he barely walked, shuffling along with a stick at a snail’s pace. Despite that, I regularly saw him a good half-mile from what I now learnt was his house, so he was much more mobile than appearances would suggest. And younger.

  He was also in charge of this encounter. Victor introduced him more formally as Arthur Winslow, and he waved his stick at me in greeting, and then again to gesture me towards the entrance of his basement flat. ‘Come in,’ he said. ‘Viv’s already here.’

  With a final cautionary If I don’t make it out, send in the troops glance at Jake, I followed.

  Viv was at the door, and she took over as we hit the threshold, hustling the three of us into the front room. It should have been a pleasant space. The houses on Talbot’s Road were well proportioned, much wider than mine, and Arthur’s faced south, so it would get a lot of light. But the brown corduroy curtains were drawn, and it felt as if they always were. Add in a brown corduroy armchair, beige-turning-brown walls, and a single overhead light fixture with one weak bulb, and it was plain that this was not a house that saw many visitors. The brown armchair was the only upholstered furniture in the room, the two wooden kitchen chairs facing it most likely having been brought in for the interview. The room was clean, and cared for, but not welcoming.

  Arthur waved his stick at me again, pointing to the chairs. I was the youngest in the room by a couple of decades, and also had no plans to stay. I waved back, feeling more than a little redundant. ‘I just came in to say hello, then I’ll leave you to get on.’

  Even though it had been he who had insisted I come, Victor looked relieved that his interview wasn’t going to be turned into a neighbourhood tea party. Viv had other notions. ‘You took photos of my flat. I want you to show them to Victor.’

  I had taken photos of her flat? I stared, puzzled. ‘When I had that jasmine flowering,’ she prodded, as you would to a slow and slightly recalcitrant pupil.

  Viv was as proud of growing her jasmine from a root cutting as Zeus must have been to see Athena springing fully formed from his forehead – ‘This little trick?’ they both shrugged modestly. Victor would have to wade through endless photos of cuttings to see her kitchen, but that wasn’t my problem. He was the one who’d got me here.

  ‘Absolutely!’ I enthused. I found my phone and pulled up my photos, scrolling through until I found the flower images. ‘There,’ I said, handing the phone over to Victor. ‘Just go through them and email the ones you want to yourself.’

  ‘And me,’ Arthur chipped in. ‘I don’t get far these days,’ he said, waving his stick meaningfully. ‘I haven’t been in Viv’s block since I was on the cart. I’d like to see it again.’

  Whatever floated his boat. Victor fumbled with the unfamiliar phone, but when they both recited their email addresses, he seemed to know what he was doing, so I kept out of it. Then I said my goodbyes and started to edge back to the door. Viv nodded at me and flicked her eyes to the hall, following hard behind me as though we had state secrets we needed to discuss in private.

  I had no plans to share my new thoughts about her friend Dennis, or my conversation with his friend Kevin. But, ‘Did you ever manage to find out if Dennis had any family?’ I presumed at some point there would be a funeral, and she’d want to go.

  She shook her head sharply, but with an expression of satisfaction that surprised me, until she said, ‘I’ve been collecting his post in the meantime.’

  ‘His post?’ I echoed. ‘Wouldn’t the police want that?’

  Her self-congratulation nearly filled the room. ‘They came to me for the key, and I went up with them. There was nothing on the mat.’

  ‘Because you’d already collected it?’ I wasn’t sure why, or what purpose it served, but she was so pleased with herself I couldn’t help smiling at her.

  Viv wasn’t of the generation that said You betcha, but her face said it for her. ‘I’ve got it here. I’ve had a look at it, but I can’t see anything that leads us back to his family. I thought you might look too.’ The original let’s-break-into-my-missing-neighbour’s-flat episode had shown that Viv hadn’t much use for personal boundaries. Now she reached out and casually lifted my handbag off my shoulder, tucking a manila envelope into the front pocket, before turning back to the men hovering by the sitting-room door. ‘My neighbour died. And Sam takes plant cuttings to one of her neighbours,’ she said, as though this were an explanation, and as though the two things were linked. In a way, they were. If we hadn’t instituted the cuttings swap, she wouldn’t have known me well enough to share her worries about Harefield.

  Nevertheless, it sounded odd, so I elaborated, explaining that Viv’s neighbour had no connection to my neighbour with the green thumb. ‘Viv’s on my way to the market on the weekend, so it’s no trouble.’ I looked at the Old Paper Guy. ‘If you ever need me to pick up anything for you at the market, you’re on my route too. And anyway, you may be doomed. I’ll probably soon have gluts to get rid of, without ever having to go shopping again.’ I told them about Steve using my front garden. ‘If he grew enough for six people in the empty house, I’m terrified of how much he’ll produce in a ten-square-metre patch.’

  Arthur waved his stick, which I now understood was his reply to most things. ‘Mo gives me salads when I go past the café to get my paper. And Mike fixed my lights for me a while back.’ It must have been quite a while back. Maybe 1947, if the single bulb was anything to go by, but Arthur seemed happy enough with it. He turned to Victor. ‘People say the area has changed, that no one knows the people they live next to anymore. But it’s still the same. We’re still a community.’ He pointed his stick at me. ‘My son does my heavy shopping. It’s what children are for.’

  Like Mr Rudiger’s daughter did his. I liked the idea that every neighbourhood was filled with Arthurs and Mr Rudigers, independent with a little bit of help. Although Arthur was less benevolently amused by the world than Mr Rudiger: ‘He’s not good for much else,’ he added matter-of-factly. ‘I was a rent collector, and he is too, just like I followed my dad into the rag-and-bone trade. You buy junk, you sell junk, you’re a junk seller. You own a building, you collect the rent, you’re a rent collector.’ He was talking to himself, not us.

  Victor made soothing noises, a lot of children-todays, intermixed with a few what-can-you-dos.

  I took that as my cue, and drifted down the hall to the front door.

  When we got home, I thought if I had to talk to another person that day, even Jake, I might just stand up on a chair and start to howl like a werewolf. To avoid that very real peril, I went straight to bed. Jake was texting as I walked down the hall, and then he detoured by the sitting room for the football round-up, but he followed me not long after. So it wasn’t until the morning that I went into the kitchen and found the footprint by the back door. A footprint, and a chip of wood which, when I looked more closely, had been gouged out of the back door frame, next to the lock.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I HAD ALREADY MADE coffee, and was about to take a sip. I didn’t realise my hand was shaking until I saw the brown splashes land on the floor next to the footprint. I didn’t call out to Jake. I didn’t do anything. I just stood there, staring at the floor, mutely holding my quickly emptying cup. Then it was gone from my hand, and Jake was turning me to face him.

  ‘What is it? What’s happened?’

  It wasn’t my hand that was shaking, it was all of me. I was shivering, as though I had a fever. Jake nabbed his sweatshirt, which was hanging on the back of a chair, and pulled it over my head. He put his hand on my forehead, and when he found I wasn’t ill, he said again, ‘What’s happened?’

  I pointed behind me, without turning to look at it, as though the print might erase itself if I didn’t look at it. ‘There. A footprint. Or, at least, dirt from someone’s shoe. And
bits of wood. Someone jimmied the lock.’

  Jake moved around me, keeping me turned away, but never taking his hand off my arm. I felt it tense when he saw what I had seen. But, ‘Come,’ he said, as he pulled me out of the kitchen. He stopped me in the doorway and went back for coffee, dumping some sugar in it quickly, then he led me to the sitting room, pushing me gently onto the sofa before handing me the cup. ‘Here. Drink.’

  At some point I hoped that people would stop telling me what to eat and drink. But I was glad it wasn’t today. I drank. The sugar was vile, but I knew he’d added it to counteract the shock. He kept his hand on me as he took out his phone and spoke briefly, then said, ‘Someone will be here soon. When they’ve checked it out, we’ll get the locks changed. Don’t worry, it will be all right.’

  It wouldn’t, but there was no point in saying that. So, ‘It was the shock. I’m fine now,’ I said instead.

  We both knew that was as much of a lie as ‘It will be all right’. And we both pretended it wasn’t, and sat silently, waiting.

  It wasn’t more than ten minutes before the bell rang. Jake opened the door to two men, one in uniform. He was sent to the kitchen, while Jake introduced the other: ‘DS Richards,’ he said. ‘Tell him what you know. I’ll be in the kitchen.’

  What I knew? I didn’t know anything. That was why I was so frightened. I decided I’d keep on pretending everything was fine. ‘Where do I start?’

  The sergeant was a short, square man, probably a few years younger than me, plain-faced, with the sort of snub nose you normally see on children. He hadn’t grown out of his, and it made him unthreatening, endearing even. I doubted that was the case, but I allowed myself to be reassured when he replied, ‘Start with when your friend went missing.’

  So I did. Or, rather, I explained that he wasn’t my friend, that I’d never met him, before telling him about going with Viv to Harefield’s flat, and about the fires. About Kevin Munroe, although I might have skimped a little on my trip down to the market. I told him about Steve and his missing documents, as well as Steve’s unexplained knowledge of my back garden. With this new incident, also involving my garden, the missing documents took on a more sinister light. At least, they did in my mind. I couldn’t make Richards feel it, no matter how hard I tried. Indeed, the harder I tried, the less interested he became, almost visibly classing me as unstable. When he said, ‘You probably just put them somewhere and forgot’ for the third time, I gave up. I knew I hadn’t done that. My alphabetised spice rack was just the tip of an obsessive iceberg. My office doesn’t resemble an editor’s office in the movies, where the stage directions read something like, Piles of manuscripts spill off the desk and onto the floor, where further piles of paper are to be found mixed with books, ashtrays and dozens of red pencils. Apart from anything else, editors in England don’t use red pencils. Red pencils are for American publishers. Here we use ordinary lead pencils, and these days we mostly work on screen. My desk has a jar of pencils and an in-tray for things to be dealt with: bills, shopping lists, a lightbulb to remind me to buy more. There is an open diary, and two piles of manuscripts. Neatly piled manuscripts, corners aligned. That’s it. But even seeing the evidence of insane tidiness all around him wasn’t going to change Richards’ view: people misplaced papers every day, therefore I’d misplaced Steve’s papers.

  I gave up and returned to today’s garden incursion, and as I was finishing up, ‘I am sure that the mud and wood were not on the floor yesterday morning,’ Jake came back.

  ‘Agreed,’ he said. ‘We were both in the kitchen yesterday, and the door to the garden was open. I closed and locked it before we went out, and I would have noticed it then.’

  Richards nodded acknowledgement of Jake’s contribution, but kept his attention on me. ‘After that?’

  ‘I didn’t go into the kitchen again until this morning. We were out yesterday from just after noon until –’ I looked over at Jake ‘– until about nine?’

  ‘Later. It was ten minutes or so before Match of the Day when we got in.’

  ‘Ten hours,’ said Richards, his voice slightly accusing as he put his notebook in his pocket. Note to self: leave smaller window of opportunity for future break-ins, to make creation of alibis more difficult.

  The bell rang again. ‘That’ll be the locksmith,’ said Jake, and moved back to the door. ‘Work out how many keys you need made for the new locks. He’ll have two and we’ll get any extras cut this afternoon. For now, give Richards a rundown on who has keys now.’

  Richards agreed, if not enthusiastically. If it hadn’t been for Jake, this wouldn’t have rated a visit even from the local plods. He pulled out his notebook again, using it as an opportunity to sneak a glance at his watch. He wanted to be gone.

  Jake wandered in and out as I ran down a list of keyholders, dividing his attention between the crime-scene technician in the kitchen, the locksmith working on the front door, and loading me up with more sugar. I tried to tell him I was no longer shivering, nor suffering from shock, and that if he persisted I would be as cranky as a four-year-old on a birthday-cake high. He appeared to feel it was worth the risk.

  ‘My cleaning lady, who has come to me once a week for nearly ten years,’ I continued, reaching for my phone to get her number for Richards. ‘My two sets of neighbours upstairs. My mother. That’s it. Oh, and Jake.’ I tilted my head in the direction of the hall, to make sure Richards knew who I was talking about.

  He knew. ‘I’ll put him at the top of the list to take to the basement at Scotland Yard for the third degree,’ he said, which was the first human remark he’d made.

  ‘Sensible.’ I was suddenly exhausted. I’d forgotten how tiring being afraid was.

  Jake came back and sat on the arm of the sofa next to me. I leant in towards him and stage-whispered, ‘You’re heading the suspects list.’

  ‘Mm-hmm,’ he agreed. ‘That’s the first lesson we learn in police college: when someone’s tried to gouge out a lock, look for a person with a key.’

  I frowned. ‘You’re right. Why did they damage the door if they had a key? And they did have a key, because the damage is inside, not out, and that door opens from the inside without one. Whoever it was came in through the front door.’

  Jake and Richards nodded in tandem. They’d known that all along, and Richards’ expression added that that was why he wasn’t taking the whole episode very seriously. I wasn’t ready to accept where his line of reasoning was going, so I made it a question: ‘Are you saying no one broke in?’

  Richards left it to Jake to explain things to the village idiot. He said gently, ‘No one physically broke in, because the two front doors – the door to the street, and the door to your flat – show no signs of damage. But someone was here. It’s still breaking and entering, and that’s why we want to know who had access to keys.’

  Richards had that list. I wasn’t going to be sidetracked by going over it again. ‘If no one broke in, why is my back door damaged?’

  ‘It’s a good question.’ So good that no one had an answer.

  Finally the technician packed up, and Richards went upstairs to talk to the Lewises and Mr Rudiger. I paid the locksmith and took the duplicate keys for the three doors. Jake watched in silence until he was gone, and then said mildly, ‘Are you going to give everyone keys again?’

  My chin went out. The hell with what biologists say about fight-or-flight responses to fear. This was fight-or-fight. ‘Who do you suggest I omit? Which of my friends and family should I not trust?’ Just as I had remembered how tiring fear was, I also now remembered that fear made me bad-tempered. Most people who know me will point out that many things make me bad-tempered, but fear really does it for me. I went on, my voice rising. ‘Mr Rudiger? My cleaning lady, who has worked for me for ten bloody years? Or maybe my mother. Let’s put Helena at the top of the list, shall we?’ Maybe not bad-tempered. Maybe completely, force-ten-gale furious.

  Jake knew it was fear, and was sympathetic, which kicked
my fury up a notch, straight to undiluted rage. ‘Sweetheart—’ he was beginning when my phone rang. Number withheld, said the screen.

  I didn’t want his sympathy, and I never want to listen to sentences that begin ‘Sweetheart’ in that tone of voice, so I answered. Even a double-glazing hard sell would be an improvement on ‘Sweetheart’.

  Or not. ‘Sam?’ asked a quavering, young-sounding voice.

  ‘This is Sam. Who is this?’

  ‘It’s Sam.’ I would never have recognised that high-pitched voice. He sounded like he hadn’t reached puberty yet.

  ‘What is it, Sam? Tell me.’ I tried to sound soothing.

  ‘I’m in the nick. We’ve been arrested.’ He swallowed. ‘I probably shouldn’t have rung you, but Viv told me yesterday that you said …’ He trailed away, and then started again. ‘I didn’t know what to do. My mum’s not around, and—’

  I broke in. ‘Of course you should have called me, Sam. That was exactly the right thing to do. I spoke to a solicitor yesterday, and she’s expecting to hear from you, so don’t worry.’

  He was silent.

  ‘It will be OK,’ I said, just the way Jake had said it to me an hour earlier. ‘It will, I promise. Tell me where you are, and I’ll phone the lawyer and she’ll sort it out. Her name is Connie, and she’s nice. You’ll like her.’ I sounded as if I was promising him a turn with the Fuzzy Felt if he drank his milk, but it was the best equivalent I could manage of Jake’s sugary coffee. I had started to scrabble for paper when Jake’s notebook and pen landed on the coffee table. I looked up to see him standing over me, eyes concerned. I turned my attention back to Sam and jotted down the information Connie would need. ‘Don’t worry,’ I repeated. ‘Someone will be there soon.’ My God, I’d replicated the entire conversation I’d had with Jake an hour before. Any second Sam would tell me how many spare keys he needed.